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start strong I guess 🤷🏻♀️
it’s confession time…..
I have always been erring more on the side of not buying fake or obvious beauty dupes for obvious reasons. which I will now explain in case it’s not obvious:
- you don’t know if the product is the same or just ripped off
- it’s very likely inferior or off
- and less important to people is its copyright infringement which is mean
that being said I was in a low moment money and mood-wise and the only thing I could see on my FYP was that silly collagen wrapping mask and in every single version of it.
at the time I didn’t have £30 to drop on a single product (nor do I now but I am an excellent sale and bargain hunter) but I decided to give it a go.
so the original was by medicube (you can purchase here*), an American K-Beauty brand that promises high end products on a mid to budget price that really do work. their formulation of this product is vegan and comes with a spatula to apply.
mine is quite clearly a rip off. though the packaging is very similar (it looks the same bottle) the logo is different, boasting the name “ilyogi” as the brand.
I did do some digging – there are a couple of Korean beauty brands that wholesale products that people can white label and drop ship from their warehouses. this quite possibly could be that as the packaging (not the outer box but the inner tube) is pretty exact to the medicube one when you buy from these factories you can choose to buy a pre-made product or formulate your own. they all have MOQs that are very high but they have tiers of price per item and the higher the quantity, obviously the lower the price per item. I believe that some of them will as a standard make a set amount of the item whatever you commission and sell the rest as overstock, altering it ever so slightly as to avoid copyright violations or law infringement. so unless you choose to buy all the stock in one go, those spares will be labelled and sold elsewhere with an almost identical formulation.
this has a noticeable strong floral scent that I was worried to put on my skin and actually reminded me of a wrapping mask from childhood.
however, I did it. I slathered my face in serum like it was going out of style and covered in emollient, just topping up with the mask itself. it takes about 15 minutes to dry and then after that you sleep with it (if you can) or leave it on and peel off for a couple of hours if you cannot. this one came with no spatula or brush and was messy as £&@#
oh my glass skin.
it really, really worked. I am ashamed to say I spend about £5 for 3 tubes and yes, I’ve used them. will I buy them again? unlikely, I feel completely guilty but wow, if you want an instant boost overnight glow up any version of the mask is probably going to work for you. me, I’ll be saving my pennies for the medicube version.
and for me this is a part of a larger conversation around dupes and fakes and whether a brand means anything. here’s my take- as a consumer we always want the best value possible, but that doesn’t always mean the cheapest. what looks like an identical copy doesn’t always mean the materials or how they were obtained is identical. and more than that, designing a product takes time and energy, training and money. fashion and beauty houses employ in store and online employees, as well as warehouse workers, factory workers and drivers and many more all over the world and that costs. so yeah, fakes cost less because they’re ripping off the finished version of a product that took time and money to develop, as well as anything expended on marketing and building that brand to get there in the first place. if you’re not going to ever buy from that brand maybe it doesn’t matter, but for me having worked for a big beauty brand in the past (and more than one) I get how much goes on behind the scenes that a consumer would just have no idea about.
what do you think? do you buy dupes? what have you had that was an amazing copy of a viral product?
love,
beautyboo x
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